Review: A Blessed Child

From Publishers Weekly: Amid Summering tourists on the tiny Swedish island of Hammarso, a blended multinational family comes together in this arresting and well-observed saga from Ullmann (Grace). Isak, professor prone to fits of rage, has a loving second wife in Rosa and three daughters by three different women. The eldest, Erika, 13, and the youngest, Molly, five, are flown to Sweden in the summer by their mothers to spend sometime with their brilliant, and infuriating father. Middle girl, Laura, Rosa's daughter, welcomes them; together, the girls apprehend terror in Isak's irrepressible fits and, tragically, in Ragnar, a local boy Erika's age who doesn't fit in. The narrative moves back and forth in time, as the three daughters converge 25 years later on Hammarso to visit their aging father, now mourning the loss of Rosa. In adulthood, each woman possesses a profound inner life haunted by buried childhood memory.

I finished reading A Blessed Child by Linn Ulmann right after Christmas. I had read good reviews of it and was interested by the fact that it had Scandinavian roots, being of Norwegian heritage myself. The book had its strengths. The descriptions of the island were vivid, and the use of what I assume to be common Swedish expressions, helped set the geographic tone. The emotions of the girls as daughters, sisters, friends, and adolescents, though sparsely described at times, were real to me and kept me interested in reading the book through to the end.

The overall sparseness of the book is what left me feeling somewhat empty at the end. There was so much material that could have been expanded...the daughters' relationship with their father; their reactions to being shipped of to live with him and their half sisters for the summer (I suppose it may not seem odd to them if it's the only life they've known); their relationships with their mothers; Ragnar's inner thoughts. My training in psychology is showing, I think. For some, the beauty of the book is likely that so much is left to the imagination. For me it felt hollow.

I don't feel like I wasted my time reading this one, but it wasn't near the top of my favorites for 2008.